Why is Trans Visibility Day and what does it mean to be visible in Latin America?
March 31st marks the International Day of Visibility for Trans, Non-Binary, and Gender Non-Conforming People. Four of them share their experiences of being visible today in Latin America.
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March 31st marks the International Day of Visibility for Trans, Non-Binary, and Gender Non-Conforming People. This date is dedicated to celebrating their lives and asserting their existence, embodiment, narratives, and rights.
Why does this date arise?
In 2009, American trans activist Rachel Crandall promoted the idea of celebrating the lives and resilience of trans people after realizing that there was only one date on the calendar (November 20) dedicated to the memory of those who were victims of transphobic hate crimes and other forms of violence. In response, Rachel promoted the need to celebrate the lives, resilience, achievements, and hope of trans people around the world. Thus, March 31 of that year was celebrated for the first time as International Transgender Day of Visibility.
Visibility is not always a goal
In Latin America, the lives of trans people can take on diverse dimensions and impacts, making visibility not always a goal. Understanding this requires situating oneself in a region where the life expectancy of trans people is 35 years, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (2015 Report). Brazil, Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala are among the countries with the highest levels of transphobic/transhating violence worldwide.
The advance of anti-rights and transphobic groups in the legislative spaces of many of them hinders the advancement of rights for these populations. According to 2019 report , only eight states recognize the right to self-perceived identity through an administrative procedure. In some cases, this is under terms and conditions, such as only guaranteeing this right to trans people of legal age. In most legislation, children and adolescents are not included, nor are non-binary people.
In addition to not recognizing their basic right to identity, the systematic violence perpetrated against trans people means that they are sometimes forced to deny their own gender identity in order to avoid being recognized by their families, schools, or health centers, or to access jobs and housing.
Despite the current situation, visibility can also have a positive impact, especially when it's built from within. When trans people support others through complicity, sharing, joy, and affection, they can live without fear or shame and know that the path isn't always solitary.
To better understand, Presentes asked four trans people from the region what it means to be visible, and what does it entail in their contexts?
“Visibility does not only imply the monstrous”
Daniela Núñez is a transfeminist, Central American, sex worker, migrant, and avid reader.
"I think being visible is important. In a way, it's a kind of representation and a powerful act, especially for the person who inhabits the marginal enunciation. But focusing solely on being visible is tickling the systems of oppression. Because, in short, being visible or having some degree of representation within certain spaces is the symbolic quota.
At the most intimate level, in my context and in the spaces where I move—which are particularly feminist—there is a high cost. It costs mental health; tranquility; leisure spaces—a series of things that are also difficult to pay for because, on the one hand, we have this transphobic feminism, where there is derision for recognizing a trans person as connected to feminist epistemologies, feminist praxis, and feminist dialogues. On the other, there is a need to recognize within oneself the possibility of a transition based on feminist epistemologies, even with the accompaniment of feminist colleagues.
Transphobia, beyond social movements, is palpable. Recognizing the gaze of the other, the rejection of what one doesn't know, what doesn't seem normal. And beyond what one doesn't know, one would think about what one doesn't consider normal and what one imagines or assumes I am. In this sense, the implications translate, in the worst cases, into transfemicides. Exclusion is reproduced in a series of difficulties in accessing things. And when I say things, I mean minimal things.
The other implication of being visible is vitally beautiful. When one looks in the mirror after a journey of questioning, of recognition, of attending to the organic nature of one's practices, of seeing oneself in the construction of one's ethical-political, transfeminist, kind project, when one goes for the first bra with friends, for the first lipstick (...) one has a kind of complicity that I believe is a challenge for academic and street activism to begin to enunciate.
Visibility doesn't just mean the monstrous and terrible nature of going out into the streets, but also the embrace of some of our comrades, of comrades from other social movements. In that sense, it's important to emphasize the beauty of the trans experience.
“It is an act of self-love and collective love”
Ali Salguero is a dancer and teacher training to become a dance therapist in the Mexican state of Sonora . She is also part of the O/trans Fanzine .
" Being a visible trans person means embracing my experience and speaking from it so that other people—trans or not—know that other ways of existing are possible . It's practicing my profession and my activism as a declaration that I am alive. It's an act of self-love and collective love."
"It means taking the risk of losing credibility, of some people thinking I'm faking or that I invented my identity overnight. It means being extremely sensitive to everything Other, everything deformed and rejected, everything that falls outside the realm of normality."
“The visibility of trans people in Honduras is an untold story.”
Nahil Zerón is a trans person who lives in Honduras, one of the most violent countries in Latin America for LGBT people.
"For me, the visibility of being trans means naming myself every day, but also discovering myself through other logics of existence. My visibility begins and makes perfect sense when it embodies in my experience a history of identities and corporalities that have not been able to live in Honduras , that have experienced the structural violence of the different systems of oppression that are perpetuated on our bodies.
To talk about the visibility of trans people in Honduras is to talk about an untold story and its implications. It not only connotes the fact that we have experienced various forms of violence and discrimination, but also the collective recognition among others and how we are not only collectivizing thoughts but also organizing and responding to these systems of oppression. Being a trans person is not only an identity; it is inhabiting the world from a different corporeality and other connections.
"It's opening the possibility for a child to grow up without fear."
Luis Tirado Morales is 17 years old, an activist who, together with his friends, runs Estrellas Trans, an artistic and social project aimed at trans children in Mexico .
"The way to be visible is to be completely honest with yourself and how you present yourself to the world. I don't necessarily think you have to literally say 'I'm a trans person.' Existing outside of cisheterosexual norms and normativity and moving freely from there seems to me to be a form of visibility ."
could have seen myself reflected in someone when I was younger . It seems to me that never seeing yourself reflected cuts off that possibility of dreaming and thinking about yourself in positive ways. Knowing that there are many types of existences helps you forge that path, where you can be trans and you can also be happy.
In my context, it meant making my family visible. Having that support is very nice, but I think it's something that's becoming more and more of a consciousness-raising issue so that others can empathize and see that trans people exist and are valuable.
Being visible opens the door for a child to grow up without fear of expressing themselves, because if they've ever seen someone else do it and it seems natural, I think it takes a lot of suffering away from them. I think it's these little things that show you that it's important to be visible.
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